Superb Start Secures Turkington Victory in 2nd Croft Race

Colin Turkington took advantage of his slightly lighter car than Race 1 winner Ashley Sutton to jump the Subaru off the start, holding steadfastly on for victory in the second British Touring Car Championship race of the weekend at Croft.

Having won the opener, Sutton’s Levorg was the most laden with ballast, helping Turkington get a better jump off the line and see him into the lead before the pack had even reached the first turn. His BMW team-mate Rob Collard also made a good start, dragging past Mat Jackson for third before they had reached Hawthorn.

The leading trio pulled away from the rest of the pack, and in the early stages Sutton was able to press Turkington for the lead. As the race wore on though, so too did the former’s tyres, allowing Turkington to escape. A small mistake at the final hairpin allowed Collard to latch on to Sutton’s bumper and press for second, but the skirmish was settled on the penultimate lap, with Collard running wide at the Jim Clark Esses and having to settle for the final podium spot.

The lead trio’s dominance was indicative of the pace differential between the rear-wheel drive and front-wheel drive cars. Gordon Shedden was the first of the FWD runners in fourth, but Race 1 podium sitter Mat Jackson found himself unable to compete with the RWD BMW of Andrew Jordan and Subaru of Jason Plato, who finished fifth and sixth respectively, just ahead of Jackson in seventh.

Josh Cook had started from seventh position, but had a race to forget. He was handed a stop-go penalty for a grid infringement, but before he was notified of it had already run into the side of Tom Ingram at Sunny Out, breaking the right-rear suspension of the Speedworks Toyota.

Conversely, AmD Tuning had their best race of the season, with Ollie Jackson securing their first Top 10 of the season in ninth place, and his team-mate Ant Whorton-Eales brought home the sister Audi eight-seconds down the road in eleventh.

Matt Neal‘s weekend went from bad to worse. He followed up his retirement from Race 1 with a trip into the tyre stack at the entry to Barcroft, having slid wide on the exit of the Esses. He nursed his car home in eighteenth place, despite the right side of his Civic suffering heavy damage from the incident.